


I just want you to know who I am

by adamparrishisbi



Series: NFWMB [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drabble, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, I didn't go crazy in the tags this time yay, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV Robb Stark, Past Abuse, Ramsay is in JAIL where he BELONGS, Recovery, un-betaed/proofread we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24037351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adamparrishisbi/pseuds/adamparrishisbi
Summary: Theon was rescued from Ramsay, but recovery is not a linear process. Luckily Robb's there to help.Alternately: A scene study of exhaustion and love.(Title from Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls)
Relationships: Past Thramsay, Theon Greyjoy/Robb Stark
Series: NFWMB [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856317
Comments: 10
Kudos: 95





	I just want you to know who I am

**Author's Note:**

> It's my last undergrad finals week so of course instead of doing actual work that I had due I hammered out 3k of vaguely depressing Throbb and stayed up until 4:30 to finish it. I don't know what I'm doing either and I also wish I would not.
> 
> TW: Character still recovering from abuse, and all that entails. References to past abuse, physical, psychological, emotional are pretty obvious, others are less specifically stated. References to self harm. References to suicide/discussions of characters risk of suicide. Depressing shit.
> 
> sad, but not like Bad Things Happening sad or sad sad just like Bad Shit Occurred sad. Not a happy ending but not not a happy ending

Robb sighed again.

Absentmindedly he reached down to put his hand on Theon’s head where it lay in Robb’s lap, carding his fingers through the curls at the nape of Theon’s neck, like Theon _used to_ like. Robb’s hand came away with clumps of brittle grey hair between his fingers and he sighed again.

“Theon. Can we please take a bath now? Will you walk with me this time?” Robb had always been the stronger of the two, and where he was sturdy and muscular, Theon was lithe and quick. Still, the ease with which he could be picked up now pained Robb. And it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence anymore either.

“I don’t want to be bad. Don’t make me be bad.” Theon’s voice came out as a soft tremble Robb could barely hear. So that’s where tonight was going. Sometimes it was worse. Sometimes it was kicking and screaming and crying for Ramsay back, some days he looked at Robb without any recognition in his eyes. Those days were frequent in the beginning but were gradually fading away, but in their wake were these. The hollow broken days when Theon would barely move, and had to be carried out of the corner of the bedroom floor. Some days were better, but they were rare, and Robb was still too scared of breaking Theon to respond well to it.

“Theon, remember, we take baths every day now. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’re here with me. You’re safe. You can do what you want, but I’d _really_ like it if you could walk with me and we could take a bath now.” Robb moved so Theon had to turn to look at him, then reached out to brush the hair out of Theon’s eyes. Theon blinked back, big doe eyes full of confusion, and still a hint of fear. So unlike the wild boy he’d grown up with.

The worst were the reckless days. At first Robb thought it was a miraculous recovery, Theon ate more for breakfast that day than he had in weeks, and told Robb he wanted to go for a drive. They were only 5 miles down the highway before Theon was pushing the car past 100 and Robb was throwing it into neutral (damnit, he could hear Theon’s voice from high school in the back of his head bitching about stripped gears and dropped transmissions) and trying to guide the car into the fields next to the highway. As soon as the car stopped Theon’s door was open and he was throwing up breakfast on the shoulder of the road, _apologizing._ That day Robb just sat next to him and cried. _No, I’m sorry._ When they were growing up Theon had always been dancing tour jetés along the reckless knife’s edge of life, constantly evading serious trouble by only a hair’s breadth, an unapologetic daredevil, who did it all with a smirk and a spark in his eye. Now Robb held his breath when Theon suggested they do something he would have once called fun, waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was a strange depth of fear to knowing that on those days Theon had almost as little regard for Robb’s life as he did his own, he was so desperate to escape. Those days were rare though, most of them were this, today, where Robb spent hours negotiating the terms of reality with Theon.

“But… he said I couldn’t.” Theon blinked up at Robb then looked away, as if eye contact had suddenly gotten too hard to continue.

“He’s not here anymore. He went away for a very, very, long time. You can take a bath. Come on, let’s try standing up first ok?” Robb was used to this. When Theon was first released from the hospital the therapist had spent an entire day with Robb making what she called a “step-down plan.” Robb asked her four different times if Theon was really ready to leave, and she just kept smiling at him, blue eyes filled with sadness and repeating the same thing, _“There’s a limited number of acute psychiatric inpatient beds in the city, we’re lucky we got him here from intensive care in the first place. He’s not at immediate risk of suicide anymore, and there’s someone in the city who’s going to walk into our ER who_ is. _”_ They had decided that none of the residential facilities within a day’s drive were a good fit, and Theon didn’t have family, really, left anymore, his sister’s visa had expired while Theon was in the hospital and she’d had to go back home, but Theon needed to stay here, so moving back in with Robb was the best option for recovery. The plan was based around a lot of structure and routine, things that had to be done every day, times when meals were eaten and plans for increasing amounts, weekly doctor’s appointments and therapy appointments and bedtime rituals for relaxation. Robb had binders on his desk now. It had been 4 months since Theon was rescued by his sister. 3 months since Ramsay had been behind bars for good. But his ghost was still haunting Theon, and by extension Robb, who woke up most nights to Theon curled up on the floor screaming Ramsay’s name again, or sobbing and rhyming. Robb was exhausted.

Dr. Tarth had given Robb a lot of suggestions for how to talk to Theon, how to ease him forward. _“The path out of trauma is not a straight line up. There are going to be setbacks, and victories, there are going to be days when he runs forward and days when you have to carry him most of the way. Keep moving forward, no matter how slowly you have to go, and he will too.”_ The one-handed outpatient therapist Dr. Tarth had referred Theon to had a slightly rougher way of describing it when Robb brought him in for the first session, _“You’ve spent so long staring the devil in the eye, but now you have to turn around, flip him off over your shoulder, and walk out of hell. Unfortunately, that requires going_ through _hell.”_ Theon had cried in response. Robb hoped one day Theon would appreciate that approach, it was the sort of thing he himself would have said in high school, but first there was hell to get through.

“I don’t deserve a bath though.” Robb sighed, yet again. He reached out and took Theon’s hands in his.

“You don’t need to do anything to earn a bath. We take one every day. No matter how the day goes, every night after dinner we watch a movie and take a bath. It’s a right, Theon, not a privilege.” Theon looked up again. The past month or so Robb had managed to get Theon to stay on the bed next to him for their nightly half-hour nature documentary, which he was glad of, but Theon still needed to be carried to the bathtub more nights than not. In the beginning the bed had sat untouched for a month, while Robb was sleeping on the floor every night next to Theon. He’d managed sleeping in the bed at the hospital, but they’d also been giving him high doses of sedatives so he would sleep through the night, and prolonged use would be too dangerous to continue at home. Not that it mattered, Theon took one look at the same bed he and Robb had shared through all of college, and refused to go near it. The apartment was different, the bedding was different, everything was different, but Robb was still the same, and some days he worried that was what scared Theon the most. The doctors had agreed it was best that Theon wasn’t getting dropped back into his life before Ramsay, unchanged, the effect of place identity might have been too contradictory to where Theon was now. Robb’s mother suggested that some continuity from Theon’s life before could offer a bridge back, and perhaps living with Robb again would be good for that reason. Quietly, personally, Robb knew there was no option for returning to life before Ramsay for either of them. After Theon left Robb had jumped head first into serious relationship after serious relationship with girls, always girls, any time Robb tried to talk to a guy at bar he just saw Theon, or the absence of him, everywhere. Robb let himself amputate part of his heart so he could still use the rest, or so he thought. Two broken engagements and a near elopement later Robb had sworn off dating and moved into the tiny apartment he lived in now, his ex-fiancée, nearly wife, had moved away suddenly anyway, and rent was hard enough without seeing the ghost of his relationship with Theon haunting every corner. Looking back on it Robb can’t believe how stupid he was to have missed all the signs, it’s what he struggles most to forgive himself for. He was just so hurt. When they graduated college and Theon moved back home Robb was sad, but Theon left with a grin on his face talking about “next time we see each other it’ll be as equals,” though Robb had never thought them otherwise. Then slowly contact lessened. The breakup was never official, but when Theon’s Instagram tags started to fill with more and more pictures of him with Ramsay the knife in Robb’s gut wasn’t new, just twisted in harder. At the time Robb wondered if you could even call it cheating if you didn’t know if you were still dating, and that hurt even more, made it easier to stop trying to reach out to Theon after weeks of no response. By the time three years had rolled around since Theon left Robb hadn’t noticed Theon’s last post on Instagram was from years ago. Robb wasn’t watching to notice the radio silence from Theon’s formerly high-traffic Twitter, and when Theon’s Facebook disappeared from his friends list, Robb just assumed the ghosting had ended with Theon blocking him. He was upset, and betrayed in the beginning, but by the time Theon disappeared, Robb had already given up.

“Okay. I’ll go… but don’t make me walk. Please?” Theon looked down at his hands, still too bony and covered almost completely by Robb’s.

“Here, arm around my shoulders, that’s it.” Robb bent to put one arm behind Theon’s back and one under his knees to carry him through the doorway to the bathroom. He sat Theon down on the edge of the tub as he drew the bath and poured in Epsom salts and soap. Theon started to shake.

“Hey, it’s okay. Come on, we do this every night, it’s okay. Here, can we take your shirt off, the bath is almost full.” Robb helped Theon undress, and lower himself into the bathtub, leaning forward to let Robb pour water through his hair and rub conditioner in, massaging his scalp. Theon let out a small content hum and hugged his knees to his chest in the lavender scented bubbles. Robb let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. This was progress. More days than not now Theon seemed to enjoy the bath once he was in it. In the early days the only option Theon didn’t fight had been ice cold water, and Robb sitting behind him, fully clothed and drenched, to hold Theon upright until he stopped apologizing for taking a bath. Back then the idea of Theon letting Robb even touch his hair sounded like a far off fantasy, but now more and more of Theon’s hair was growing in black again as the grey was slowly dwindling, and Robb hoped soon it would be strong enough to shampoo again.

“Robb”

“mhm”

“Thank you.”

“Theon, you don’t need to thank me for letting you take a bath.”

“No, thank you for caring. Thank you for carrying me in here.” Theon looked at Robb with a moment of clarity, then started crying again. “I think I need to get out now.” Robb pulled the plug from the tub and helped Theon rinse out his hair, then handed him an oversized towel.

“Can you walk back to the bedroom? I’ll get you pajamas once we’re there” Robb asked. Theon nodded, and they walked back to the bedroom, Theon wrapped the towel around himself tighter as Robb pulled a set of pajamas out of the nightstand and set them next to Theon.

“Safe if I go shower?” Robb asked. Theon nodded again.

“I need you to say it out loud.” Robb crouched down to eye level with Theon.

“I’ll be safe while you take a shower. If I don’t feel safe I’ll go into the bathroom and find you before I do anything else. If I’m bad I’ll find you. If I want Ramsay I’ll find you. If I’m tired I’ll go to sleep.” Theon counted off on the 4 remaining fingers on his left hand, and Robb sighed again. It still sounded too much like rules, and Ramsay had had a lot of them for Theon, but so much of Ramsay’s abuse had been based on ever-changing rules Theon could never follow, and Robb’s binder from Dr. Tarth suggested consistent and objective expectations would help Theon adjust. The safety checks were necessary too. If Theon couldn’t repeat all 4 items back, Robb knew he wasn’t stable enough to be left alone that day. Robb _liked_ to be able to leave Theon alone for 15 minutes while he showered. He liked to give Theon time to decompress and dress alone. Robb really didn’t like the days when he had to take a quick shower with the curtain open so he could watch Theon sitting on the chair in the corner of the bathroom, but the alternative was worse.

“Okay, I’ll leave the bathroom door open, don’t play music too loud ok?” Robb looked at Theon, who nodded again, and went back to the bathroom. Robb stared at himself in the mirror and looked at the ginger hair near his temples that was a shade paler than it had been a year ago. _You’re lucky redheads don’t go grey Stark, 25 is too young to be a silver fox._ That was the sort of joke Theon would make in college when Robb was stressing over finals, never mind that Theon’s hair was almost white at 27 when he’d been rescued. Robb pulled out his electric clipper and flicked it on, buzzing his beard down to a close crop. His old safety razor was, ironically, no longer a safe option, so he’d had to embrace the perpetual ‘long stubble’ look he’d sported through college. Robb heard the TV click onto another nature show, and listened as the volume turned down to barely audible. He took that as a cue to shower.

Four months ago when Robb got a phone call at three in the morning from Theon’s sister, at the police station, he didn’t know how to respond. She just said “ _I found him.”_ The part of Robb’s heart he thought he had bound off with a tourniquet roared back to life and the back of Robb’s mind whispered _you knew he wouldn’t just leave you._ One night, while Theon was still in Intensive Care, and sleeping through the night on a morphine drip high enough to drown out the agony of flayed skin, and any semblance of reality, Robb had sat there in the hospital chair in an insomniac haze scrolling through the old texts, and Theon’s tagged Instagram pictures, lining up when his responses had started to dwindle, and when Ramsay’s pictures of them had shifted from a smiling Theon at lunch with coworkers to just Theon and Ramsay, with fewer and fewer friends as the light died in Theon’s eyes, and his face thinned out to skin and bone. Robb threw up in the hospital bathroom and went home that night, wondering how Theon could ever look at Robb and see anything other than a lifeguard who watched him drown. As it turned out, for the first month Theon could barely look at Robb and see him at all.

“What are we watching now?” Robb called as he stepped out of the shower. Theon always got to pick the show, one small way of letting him control his environment, but he went through phases. At first it had all been true crime, and Robb had called the therapist’s office to ask if Theon was retraumatizing himself. Jaime laughed and told Robb _“if it’s retraumatizing, you’ll know, but I don’t think cold case suburban murders are going to be a problem.”_ Still, Robb was glad when the shitty sitcom phase took its place, and gladder still when the children’s movies, and then nature documentaries followed.

“This one’s about wolves” Theon responded when Robb walked into the bedroom.

“Did you know wolves mate for life?” Robb responded, sitting down on the bed.

“I… think that’s a myth…” Theon looked unsure and for a moment Robb faltered, fearing his joke would upset Theon.

“Well this wolf does.” Robb replied, tapping gently over his heart and smiling at Theon. Theon smiled back, and briefly the fear lifted from his face, before falling back down as he leaned forward in a kiss. Robb moved back away.

“Hey, it’s okay. I love you how you are, where you are now. I loved you when you crashed my car in high school, and I loved you when I roomed with you our freshman year of college, even if you almost got us kicked out for spilling Everclear on the desk and stripping the paint off it. I loved you when you were 9 and we spent an entire snow day building a fort and then it melted overnight. I loved you the first time you said I looked good in a suit for one of those awful concerts I performed at in college. I loved you when we moved in together sophomore year, even though we’d only technically been dating for a month at that point, because I have loved you for all of my life Theon Greyjoy. I loved you the first time we kissed, and I would have kept loving you even if I never kissed you again. And I will still love you when you do want to kiss me again, even if that’s 30 years from now, but I need you to want to, and I need to know that you don’t feel like you have to.” Tears were pricking in the corners of Theon’s eyes, and Robb was almost there himself. The fear had lifted from Theon’s face again and this time when he leaned forward he put his head on Robb’s chest and wrapped too-thin arms around Robb’s waist.

“What did I do to deserve you” Theon whispered into the soft cotton of Robb’s t-shirt, and Robb brought his arm up around Theon’s bony shoulders and let himself cry.

“You loved me. When I was 5 years old and my dad brought you home as a foster kid, even though I had a cousin and 3 younger siblings living there already, and you cried for the entire first day you were there, when there was a thunderstorm that night and I panicked, who came to help? You did. You were the only one, and you were only 7, but you heard me crying and brought all of your blankets into my room and helped me make a fort, and told me stories about magical creatures who lived in the ocean so I wouldn’t be so scared of the thunderstorm. The very first day I knew you, Theon, you saved me, and we’ve been doing it back and forth ever since.” Robb looked down at Theon. Theon looked up at Robb.

“You remember?”

“ _You_ remember?”

Theon sniffled.

“Some things just stick.” Theon looked back down.

“Can we stay on the bed tonight?” Robb asked.

“Yeah, I can try.”

**Author's Note:**

> Like I said before, wrote this in one go super late at night without much editing (although there was some restructuring, one chunk got completely relocated, there was briefly a part where Brynden Tully was introduced as a psychiatrist at Blackfish Behavioral Health and then I was like 'actually that's not helpful here' so know that for all the irrelevant tangents, there was at least some idea of moderation).
> 
> If anything is complete and utter nonsense lmk, but also if you'd like to see more in this little ultra ambiguous modern AU lmk, I enjoyed doing this kind of vignette.  
> I’m considering adding more of them looking at either high school/college years, Robb when Theon’s just left or when he’s alone in the new apartment, Whatever The Fuck Theon’s Sister is up to, or Robb/Theon again further into the future in a different stage of recovery so let me know if any of that seems more or less interesting.
> 
> Find me on tumblr as @adamparrishisbi


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